SWTOR: Knee deep in Lightsabers and Loving it

So what do you do when you’re burnt out on grind games? I guess you retire in Star Wars the Old Republic.

I started playing SWTOR again after a very long absence. I’ve tried playing it off and on since it went free to play, even subbed up once. Up until about a month ago though, it didn’t really catch my fancy.

Now it’s starting to really grab my attention. It has more content, less grind and getting to the story and getting on to the next one isn’t as much of a hassle as it used to be. Probably more so for subscribers though which is something to keep in mind.

Fortunately Bioware realized that if they let players enjoy the kick ass stories they’ve created instead of forcing them to jump through hoops and kill ooodles (and yes I do mean oodles) of rats to get there, the players might, I dunno, enjoy the game? Those players might even…. pay for it! Total shocker I know.

I welcome the change and I finally got to finish the Sith Assassin/Sorcerer story and enjoy it as opposed to seeing snippets of it and forgetting what I did a few days ago because I can’t sit at the compy and power level my way through the content just to see the next snippet of story.

Since CrankyB and I have begun the grand adventure known as parenthood, it’s been tough finding a game we can enjoy together that we can still drop on a moment’s notice to go and take care of the Kraken (yes she has her own code name already).

SWTOR, what with fast travel, ships and now even letting you zoom into heroics, makes the game a LOT easier. Especially when you have to stop, drop and run for the pacifier that was tossed out of the cradle and into another time zone.

On a side note SWTOR actually has me looking forward to the end game. This is a big deal for an MMO slacker like me because as many know I rarely if ever bother getting to the end game. Usually because I’m not in raiding guilds and I find group finder to be a hub of scum and villainy.

In the current incarnation of SWTOR they seem to be putting more emphasis on story over raids and adding incursions. I want to see how this and getting command xp works out. It’s pretty much the opposite of what happened to Guild Wars 2 and is the big reason why I left the game when they added raids and dropped the xp gain for skill points past level cap.

As a person who actually enjoys having bars to fill, I have a hard time dinging at the level cap because well, what bar do I have to fill after that?

SWTOR is also a game that I can play with Moms and friends easily and not feel hampered by levels, combat complexity, and pay walls.

I enjoy having a game that I can play with Moms, it’s something that we started years ago with WoW and I try to keep that tradition alive when we find a game that works for both of us. She loved and excelled at WoW, even more so than I did to be honest. I’m hoping that SWTOR could be something she could enjoy too.

She’s been playing Destiny on Xbox with my brothers so swapping back to PC takes some getting used to. Safe to say that the tab target combat and scaling help a bunch. She can fight things a lot more easily when transitioning from console combat and I can go back and hang out with her even on my main and still get some gain out of it. That by the way, is toats awesome.

So with all that in mind, for now SWTOR gets the Fry meme:

We’ll see how long SWTOR keeps my attention. For now though I can tell folks that if you’re on limited time SWTOR isn’t a bad MMO to run around in if you only have a few hours a night to spare. They really seem to have focused on the parts of the game that rock and dropped off some of the stuff that made it feel awkward or got in the way of the fun.

You may have to sub to see the full benefit, but if you don’t want to you can always get along pretty well for free. It helps if you get into a guild with bennies and group up. If you want unlocks you can also earn a few cartel coins through game play to pay for unlocks as you go. That’s not such a bad way to do things to get and keep players in the game. Good show SWTOR, good show.

Until next time, I’ll be zapping people in SWTOR and hoping that everyone else is having just as much fun.